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Casual Gaming the Real Next Gen?
The Guardian Gamesblog wonders aloud about the ramifications of casual gaming; could it be that the wave of casual and mobile games is the real next generation of gaming? Author Keith Stuart interviews Matt Spall, of UK studio Morpheme, for an insider's perspective. From the article: "People buying the DS to play Brain Training, and Nintendogs are probably not even aware of Metroid or Advance Wars which kind of suggests this might be a one-way street — the hardcore aren't likely to buy these 'ultra casual' titles in great numbers, because they're fairly simplistic, and don't offer a great deal of depth for a hardcore player. Hopefully though, some people who would never normally play games now own DSs, and may 'graduate' to more advanced titles over time. Having said that, the fact that the DS market can support things like Electroplankton, which can keep anyone charmed for ages, is already encouraging."
I liked several of the games on the DS and saw its promise (my roommate has one) but decided the oddly shaped and tough to pocket system was not for me... the DS Lite, however, is a different matter. Before, the games may have appealed to someone but the system proved to be a bit of a turn-off -- now the DS Lite opens doors to give the good games a good platform and it all equals a good opportunity for Nintendo. Now... as soon as they release a black one in the US, I will buy it.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Casual gamers are less likely to purchase all of those lovely extras for their games, thus generating less money. I do not know many super casual gamers who are out buying the latest SLI pair of graphics cards or multiple expansions to enhance their "Electroplankton" experience. This is a bigger deal for computer games instead of portable or consol games, but it is still worth noting. I do not see casual gaming becoming the "Real Next Gen," as TFA asserts.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
casual gaming has always been huge. just look at the crossword puzzle in the papers. i wonder how many millions of people in america do the daily crossword puzzle in their local paper. or how many sudoku books have been sold.
this is just porting that popularity into a medium where someone can pay a reasonable price for unlimited access to lots of different types of activities and iterations of these activities.
No no no no no no no. This is just wishful thinking on the developers' part.
Look at the greater casual game industry in general, which is far older and more mature than what we've seen on the DS thus far. Even after years upon years of casual gaming, the vast majority of users are *still* playing their Bejeweled clone #5758, and *still* doing the Solitaire thing. I have seen *very* few casual gamers get into even slightly more complex games.
IMHO there's a real ache in the industry for casual-hardcore games. Games that reach beyond the mindnumbing luck/repetition of card games and match-3 gameplay, but appeal to real gamers, but at the same time are less time-consuming and can be produced at the budget level. I for one (as both developer and player) am sick of $50 games that are more shiny bumpmaps than gameplay. Where are the games like Darwinia and Gish? Why isn't there a larger market for these guys?
It seems to me that the executives of companies are on the verge of finally discovering a way into the mainstream with gaming. Sure, they are creating games for the 'hard core', which IMO seems to be the 20-something sect with alot of free time on their hands and not alot of money, or the slightly younger group that still live at home, with lots of free time, and daddy's wallet.
What some companies are discovering, Nintendo comes to mind, is that games do not have to take hours to become proficient in, and many many hours to complete. Those of us in our thirties, the ones that grew up on Atari 2400's and Pong attached to our TV's through RF splitters, don't have that kind of time anymore to set aside for gaming. But we still like to occasionally sit down (stand in line, etc.) and play a little here and there. But our kids have lots of free time.
Instead of targeting a console or handheld at the 'hard core', make it appeal to both the young and old. There is nothing wrong with having the latest 'OMGL33T' game on the same console as something that takes little time to play.
As to TFA, I think that they are mistaken in their assumption that someone playing a non hard-core game is going to 'graduate' to a more advanced title. I imagine alot of us have 'graduated' outside of the more advanced titles and are looking for something with a little more depth that doesn't take away from the lives that we live in terms of time.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel...
Oh wow, a company is releasing games that can be played in 10 minute intervals. Clearly this is the next generation in gaming!
It's like the people who come up with a new genre of techno music for each song. It's called variety, people.
Arguably World of Warcraft is the best example of how good a casual game can do. Sure, once you get to 60 your options as a casual gamer become more limited. But as your leveling up, one of its greatest strengths is that all players can get on and get something done, even with a limited amount of time.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
In terms of big money, casual gaming is undoubtedly the future. Just as "family" movies consistently dominate more audience specific movies at the box office casual games will eventually start to dominate hardcore games.
:) but the real size of the market is everyone - men, women, and children - not just young males. If you can sell a game to a good percentage of everyone you can and will make a shitload more money than someone who sells a game to a huge percentage of young males.
As time goes by, a larger and larger percentage of the population plays video games. Yes, there is the young male crowd (including some older ones who continue being "hardcore"
Note: I'm not saying that there aren't hardcore female or old gamers, just that based on statistics many of the most "hardcore" gamers tend to be young and male. Gamers in general are actually getting much older.
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I bought a DS because of Electroplankton (mostly from the respect for the artist and his SimTunes) but I don't think it's keeping people charmed for ages... (I do wish it was more SimTunes like, somewhere closer to a tool than "just" a toy...)
Casual Gaming is interesting though. I heard how those "10 in ones" are a monstorously huge market. Too bad there's not more of an indy movement w/ standalone hardware...
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Im not sure if this will be what defines 'next gen'.
One reason is where is the line drawn between hardcore and casual? its not a black and white world folks. I consider myself a casual gamer because I play for about 2 hours a day. Ask my girlfriend though, and Im a hardcore gamer. Ask my other friends who play WoW all day, and im casual. So does that mean people like me will define it? Or people playing brain teaser will define it? There has to have a line drawn somewhere.
Another reason is that this is not something that will define next gen. Or atleast I hope it doesnt. If anything, it should be considered another market to tap. Just like kids games like harry potter are pumped out to appeal to that market, they should also be pumping out games that people can pick up and put down in about 15 minutes. But to say its 'the real next gen' is just saying its black and white world.
Portables like the DS are more likely to be bought by the 'casual gamer' simply because they can be played in short bursts, then put back in the pocket/handbag/on the coffe table or whatever and forgotten about. They're simple, cheap and easy to use.
:p) and the controllers scare off most people who aren't already regular gamers. (My PS2's DualShock has 11 buttons, two analogue sticks, both of which can also be used as buttons, and a d-pad. Is my mother ever going to give that a try? Hell no.) So if you sit down to play a console game, you're practically committing yourself to multiple hours of play, often with a steep learning curve. For probably the majority of people, that's just not something they'd think of doing. It might not even be an option if they have kids.
This is not the case with consoles. They're fixed to one location (how many people go to the trouble of moving a console and all its assorted cables and gubbins from one room to another?), more expensive (well, PSP aside
So if casual gaming really is going to be the 'real next gen', it'll be on portables like the DS - not consoles. Granny Smith will never buy a PS3. But she might buy a DS to play Brain Training, or Sudoku.
Personally, to me the epitome of 'casual gaming' is the kind of twitch-game that can be played for five or ten intense minutes, then put down. Robotron 2084 is still one of my favourite games of all time for exactly this reason.
You must think in Russian.
I had an informative, insightful, interesting paragraph to respond to this story with... but I'm not going to post it. You see, I'm one of the new, exciting, extreme breed of casual Slashdotter, and I'm just not as into posting to Slashdot.
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Atari 2600, not 2400. I think you're confused with the dial-up modem speed's number. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Because there are more dollar signs attached to this segment of the market than ever before, and it's fascinating to watch. e.g. imo "Casual gamers" made WoW a juggernaut hit, not the hardcore crowd...publishers saw that and said "Holy shit, we've got it bass-ackwards!" and a new demographic is born that appeared almost, almost out of nowhere - WoW's runaway success has taken everyone by surprise.
This mainstreaming of videogames really hit me yesterday when I was in the dr's office lobby and 3 out of the 4 people there, all who came in separately, each had a DS out while they waited. Now I don't know if that proves anything, necessarily, but it was pretty damn cool.
<watches next gen status fly out the window>
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
You're forgetting the largest platform for casual games: the PC. This includes download and web games. A large number of folks spend their days on sites like Pogo, MSN Games, Real Arcade, etc. Many folks do play during work, others are homebodies (retirees, stay-at-home parents, etc.). The number of concurrent users on these sites are fairly staggering, up to 200,000 simultaneous users at times. Yes, the PC is a fixed location, but it's also something that you can multi-task easily. Do work, and play a few rounds of a puzzle game every so often. Can't really do that with a console.
But I agree, if you compare between portables and consoles, the former is definately going to win out. Especially if you consider the mobile phone as a portable gaming device.
-- jchenx
"might be a one-way street - the hardcore aren't likely to buy these 'ultra casual' titles ... some people who would never normally play games now own DSs, and may 'graduate' to more advanced titles over time."
My mom, who bought a DS for Brain Age, is not going to "graduate" to Metroid. I have friends that are addicted to Spider Solitaire, they are not going to "graduate" to Unreal 3.
On the other hand, I've seen plenty of my friends, who use to be hardcore gamers, start playing casual games. When you get girlfriends, jobs, car payments, a wife, kids, etc. suddenly it becomes much harder to justify the time and money needed to be hardcore.
If anything, hardcore gamers graduate to become casual games with lives.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
Not to call you an idiot or anything, but first of all, it's not Techno, it's Electronic music (Techno is a made up word by people who don't understand the differences between different forms of electronic music). The names mean a lot.
You must shop at the music stores where they only have Rock, Alternative and Electronic (wait..nvm...they still know it's not techno)
Secondly, Casual gaming is becoming a huge industry hit. The only problem is that until now it's all been free/shareware and free trials. I spend more time playing Space Cadet Table then I ever did playing Halo or Counter-Strike. It's because even though I don't have the time, it's easier to just fire up a game you can subsequently turn off 5 minutes later. The same thing is happening to lots of people I know. Almost all of my friends spend most of the X-Box time playing Tetris or something similiar. Obviously, you still have the "Lets rent XX game and play it all weekend", as well as the people who come home every day from school/work and play their 60 dollar games, but a lot people simply don't have the time to put in the hours needed to enjoy a long, in depth game.
I think there's market room for both. The hardcore can dump a grand on a ps3 and a pile of 3d shooters, and there will be several million of these folks.
There is also an addressable market of several tens of million people interested in spending a couple hundred dollars a year and a couple hours a week on video games.
It's like any other recreation market. There are cyclists who will drop five grand on a carbon-fiber frame, and those of us who like to take a ride around the lake on our three hundred dollar mountain bikes. There is a market for motorists driving quarter million dollar lotus roadsters, but mazda sells a higher total revenue worth of miattas. so on and so forth.
The casual games that are doing well are doing so because they have what people want, an engaing and fun experience. I fall safely into the "hardcore" description, but am slowly coming to the realization that the AAA titles sometimes miss the point. The nail the graphics, sounds, and guest Hollywood voice-over chicks, but are not nessasarily fun. I'm deeply involved in Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, but I have been hooked into Kirby Canvas Curse all week. When it comes down to it, I'll play what is fun regardless of the development budget. The sooner gamers come back to basics, the sooner the big publishers will start pushing innovation instead of sequals. Nintendo seems to have figured it out with the DS and the upcoming Wii. Lets hope the other two jump on board.
That's not to say that revenues from casual gamers will exceed those from extreme gamers, or even FPS or MMORPG gamers.
But as a previously mostly untapped market, based on what has been happening in a number of countries, and specifically with the Nintendo DS, casual gaming is where the next growth area is.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Columnists commonly group gamers into two wildly generalized stereotypes: the "casual gamer" and the "hardcore gamer". Now, for a second, let's forget about the extreme ambiguity of the label "hardcore", and the wide variety of demographics within the "casual gamer" catagory, and ask ourselves, "just really, what are we talking about?"
Are we comparing the amount of time put into video games? Are we looking at how people define themselves, socially, in terms of video games (ie: "I consider myself a gamer")? Are we talking about the TYPES of video games that different groups of people play (ie: Elektroplankton vs. Suikoden V vs. Half Life 2)? Even, possibly, are we looking at how a person views video games as an entertainment genre (is it a ligitimate form of entertainment equal to that of litterature and cinema)?
From a marketting perspective, it's not quite as simple as casual/hardcore. There are many gamers who will never leave the PC world, because of the additional hardware required. There are many people who consider themselves "hardcore gamers" (myself included), that will constantly be drawn to handheld systems because they seem to be more devoted to the roots of video gaming. There are some "hardcore gamers" (like a friend of mine) who are still struggling to embrace gaming as ligitimate, mature, entertainment form, and therefor only play early games, feeling that games are only relivent for nestolgic value.
I find this concentration on "casual gamers" to be very silly and a bit shortsided. There's a good chance that the Wii is going to be a hit all the way across the board, but my suspicions is that its biggest supporters are going to be life-long gamers, the emulator crowd (and the would-be emulator crowd): those that feel that the original ideals of gaming got a bit lost somewhere along the way, and thus the direction of gaming should back up a bit, and then branch out from there. Similarly with handhelds, some of the people I consider to be the "hardest-core" gamers I know are huge GBA and DS fans.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
The problem is the games aren't designed for those of us that have half an hour to an hour to play. Well at least in games with some depth. I can't commit to 2+ hours between save points, or long levels. In fact I've heard similar complaints from others I've talked to online. Two Towers got fairly bad marks because of the sparse savepoints in Helm's Deep. More or less you couldn't start the level unless you had 1.5 hours to devote, because otherwise you'd have to quit before you could save.
Another problem that keeps some away is the high cost. unless you make a lot of money, $50 is *not* a casual purchase. Yet for any game system you buy, that's the standard price. Most people aren't going to buy a $50 game that they aren't sure they're going to like. I think the limit may be far lower, about $15 or so (about the cost of a movie). Much above that, and casuals are thinking "am I really going to enjoy this game *that much*?". So if you want casual gamers to play, make cheap games that are fun to play.
I recently went to Japan, and the prolifiration of the DS is just crazy there, everywere you see people of all ages. playing with DSs. So i think what is happening is more previously non-gamers are turning into casuals, and more casuals are turning hardcore.
Myself included, I have never owned a console before, but recently i bought a GBA, and a few games and was mostly a 'casual', but then i bought a flashcard (http://www.supercard.cn/) and couldn't stop playing constantly. That has since wore off, and now i rarely play anymore. but now my gf has taking over and is playing like crazy. So i think a lot of people are changing between being hardcore and casuals in different periods of time.
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Your site there doesn't even have a Quake 4 section. Is that "realism"-shooter-only or what?
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From the article:
I don't know about Nintendogs, but as a hardcore gamer, I found Brain Training really appealing. I don't know if I would even really consider it a "game" in a hardcore sense, but there's no reason that a "hardcore" gamer can't enjoy a simplistic diversion now and then. Especially one that's supposed to be good for your brain. After all, a true hardcore gamer wants to keep skills in shape.
In Japan, even ignoring the piles of educational titles, the DS has also has a lot of decent utility software. The ever-growing lineup includes a fully-featured electronic dictionary (which also includes quizzes), interactive travel phrasebooks (which make really clever use of the dual screens between two users of one DS) and even cookbooks.
As a hardcore gamer and a Japanophile, I would still lust for this machine even if I didn't care about any of the game titles. (After all, it's cheaper than an electronic dictionary, and you can easily look up kanji that you can't read with the stylus.) Combined with the small form factor and style of the Lite, this software library is rapidly making the DS a "take-everywhere" tool, almost to the level of an iPod or a cell phone. How can this concept not catch on in the west? Can we really keep ignoring the fact that demographically speaking, game machines aren't for kids?
I am hardcore enough, with having played many Ultimas having been into gaming since 1980 having played a lot mainstream titles over the years, having played most Lucasarts adventures. Yet I love some of the simplistic stuff on the DS, like Wario Touch. It is a different kind of gaming which I could enjoy on early consoles and which died out over the years. That does not mean I do not like deep long running games, but both types of games have their pros and cons.
While she will probally not "graduate" to Metroid she may instead graduate/move on to WarioWare, Meteos, NSMB, or even Nintendogs to name a few. Brain Training is so popular because its intuitive, and the games I mentioned are pretty straight forward and don't have complicated controls. Nintendo or whoever is expecting casual gamers to say, "Hey this isn't so hard, I've heard a lot of good things about Meteos, maybe I'll give it a shot." and with DS games between 20-35 casual gamers can stand to take a risk a bit more with a purchase.